Kevin Kinsella, Avalon Ventures. (Courtesy photo)
The premier provider of private law and justice went on trial over its own legal ethics.
Venture capitalist Kevin Kinsella took his claim that JAMS fraudulently inflated a neutral’s biography to a San Diego Superior Court jury on Tuesday. Kinsella alleges that an army of JAMS marketing professionals added phony business accomplishments to retired appellate justice Sheila Sonenshine’s online JAMS biography to attract businessmen like him to use her services.
“I emphasize the word fraud. It’s a very serious allegation,” Kinsella’s attorney, Bryan Vess, told 12 jurors and three alternates in Judge John Meyer’s courtroom.
Vess gave Kinsella’s opening statement Tuesday morning with Long & Levit partner Joseph McMonigle scheduled to present JAMS’ in the afternoon. While Vess is seeking to make the case a referendum on JAMS’ business practices, JAMS is expected to present Kinsella as a disgruntled divorce litigant who’s simply unhappy about being ordered to pay more spousal support. The company accuses Kinsella in court filings of waging “an unrelenting campaign” of harassment that included “stalking” Sonenshine at a CLE event. Kinsella claims he simply attended one event as part of his investigation into how Sonenshine markets herself.
Vess told the jury that JAMS falsely presented Sonenshine as a lawyer and entrepreneur who co-founded an investment bank and founded a private equity fund. “That was the hook” for a sophisticated client such as Kinsella, Vess said. “It went to the heart of what he was looking for in a judge.”
But Sonenshine never raised any outside money (he played video from her deposition where she acknowledged “zero percent” came from outsiders), so it wasn’t true to call it “private equity,” he said. It was more like “a husband and wife sitting in their robes talking over coffee about what investments they should make” with their own money.
Vess also talked up Kinsella’s business and personal accomplishments, apparently in part to inoculate against expected attacks from JAMS. He described Kinsella as an Eagle Scout whose Avalon Ventures helped launch companies that developed cancer and hepatitis treatments, and iPhone screen features.
JAMS is expected to argue Sonenshine’s bio is truthful. But even if it isn’t, the company says it’s doubtful Kinsella relied on it when he agreed to have Sonenshine act as a privately compensated temporary judge to preside over his marital dissolution.
And even if there was reliance, JAMS claims any potential recovery is limited to $80,000 in fees Kinsella paid for Sonenshine’s 15 months presiding over the case. Kinsella says he’s entitled to the $80,000, plus $1.6 million in attorney and accountant fees he paid during those 15 months, but Meyer made it clear he hasn’t signed off on that theory yet. Kinsella is also gunning for punitive damages.
JAMS will also try to focus on Kinsella’s conduct during and after Sonenshine presided over his case. Kinsella hired a private investigator — Vess called him a “fact checker” Tuesday — to look into Sonenshine’s professional and academic background. After Sonenshine recused herself, Kinsella tried to subpoena emails between superior court judges to see if they discussed the case with her. When JAMS tried to get the Fourth District Court of Appeal to strike the suit under the state’s anti-SLAPP law, Kinsella sued the court and tried to recuse the appellate justices. He said it’s because the Fourth District’s website touted their former colleague Sonenshine’s work at JAMS. The Fourth District eventually scrubbed that part of her bio.
Contact Scott Graham at [email protected]. On Twitter: @scottkgraham.
